


The Mighty Fieber

by hufflepirate



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fever, Fever Dreams, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Sickfic, Suicidal Thoughts, Team Humans, Vomiting, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-06-12 15:40:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15343014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hufflepirate/pseuds/hufflepirate
Summary: When Caleb gets very sick, the rest of the Nein take care of him. The fever draws some of Caleb's issues to the front, but if Beau can figure out how to use punching for medicinal purposes, she can figure out how to talk about feelings. Maybe. Caleb isn't used to being cared about, but sometimes if it's masked enough, he can navigate it anyway.





	The Mighty Fieber

Caleb lifted his head and couldn't figure out which of the many unpleasant sensations was making it difficult to do. The cart underneath him jostled him roughly, but he wasn't sure it was enough to account for the splitting headache or the fact that he felt like he'd been soundly beaten, and it _definitely_ didn't account for the dizziness.

He laid his head back down and the dizziness got marginally better, but the tradeoff was a sour feeling in his stomach as the motion of the cart got simultaneously easier to process and harder to bear. He closed his eyes and the dizziness got worse again, followed by the stomachache, and before he could really process the fact that he was about to throw up, it was happening, and he was still on his back, and he couldn't breathe, and it took everything in him to roll himself onto his side.

The first stream of vomit was almost silent, but then he finally cleared his esophagus enough to breathe in and it came as a loud gasp, followed by coughing and retching that shook his whole body and made all the aches worse. He tried to lift his head, but the angle was all wrong and it took several tries to rearrange his body into a position where he could both vomit and breathe without his throat getting the two mixed up.

He didn't even hear the canvas lifting up on the wagon cover behind him until Beau said, "Oh shit," and even if he'd wanted to say something back, breathing was still taking up too much of his attention.

She spoke again a moment later, her voice muffled again. "Molly, pull over. Caleb's puking his guts out back there. Jester, can you come over here?"

Caleb wasn't sure whether it took a long or a short time to pull the cart over, because he couldn't look at the sky, and his ears were ringing, and everything seemed to be spinning, but he was finally done throwing up, now, and as he laid back down, he found the energy to scowl about it. It wasn't _right_ not knowing how much time was passing. It wasn't _right_ feeling out of sync.

When the cart stopped, stilling underneath him, it was a relief. He realized that some of the incessant, disorienting motion had been his body shaking of its own accord, but now that it was the only movement, his brain could get a handle on it, could make sense of it, and that was better, probably.

In the stillness, it wasn't hard to pick up Jester's voice on the side of the cart with Beau, and he rolled over, away from the puddle of vomit, and let himself lie on his side facing their direction instead. The entire side of the cover lifted up, and then he heard a half-grunt behind him, probably from Yasha, and between Jester pushing and probably-Yasha pulling, the whole thing came up off the cart and rotated over to the side behind him, and then he was in the open air, being stared at.

"Oh no, Caleb!" Jester exclaimed, "Did you get hurt? You didn't tell us!"

She reached for him, her hands scrabbling at the edges of his clothes, and everything hurt, but not the way an injury did, but he couldn't work out the words to say that, so instead he forced himself to sit up, pulling away and sliding backward out of her grip before she could get to him.

He scrambled away successfully, but sitting up made his head reel. He realized only as Nott caught him, steadying him from behind, that he wasn't the only one in the back of the cart anymore. She'd crawled from the front bench to the back, and he wasn't sure he wanted to be leaning heavily into her, but it was already happening, so he went with it.

"We haven't been in that kind of a fight in days, Jester," Beau said, "We'd know by now if he'd been hurt. And he wouldn't be reacting like this."

"Yeah," Fjord agreed, "It's definitely some kind of illness. You got any medicine in your bag?"

"Oh, yes!" Jester said, pulling her haversack around to the front and digging into it, "Let's see what I've got in here."

She looked up at him after a moment of digging. "Oh, Caleb, your face is so red," she said, sounding sad, "Are you embarrassed because you threw up and then you sat in it? It's ok! It's not your fault you're sick, and we already are used to you being smelly! You just don't even worry about it, ok?"

He wasn't sure what to say to that, so he didn't, but she didn't seem to need a response, continuing on without him.

"Let's see, this one is good for _wounds_ , and this one is good for _poisons_ , but of course, you can't be poisoned or we would know that had happened, because we haven't been in a fight and we all eat the same things. This one is - no. And this - no. _This_ one is good for STDs. Do you think you could have an STD, Caleb?"

He wasn't sure what to say to that, either, exactly, but "no" seemed good enough, right up until the moment where he thought it and it didn't actually come out of his mouth. He stared blankly at her instead, until she laughed.

"No, I don't think you have an STD. We haven't been around people for a while, either. Not like that anyway. But if you _do_ decide to-" she clicked her tongue three times like she always did when she wasn't saying the word "sex," and continued, "you should probably take a bath first. You don't get STDs from being yucky, you get them from people who _have_ them, but you can get other things from being yucky, and anyway people like it when people who are having sex with them smell nice."

"Jester-" Fjord admonished.

"Right, right!" she said, throwing him a grin over her shoulder, "I'm still looking, it's alright." She dug around some more, face sliding into a frown as she reached the bottom of the bag without finding anything useful. "Huh," she said, "That's really weird. You would think _something_ in my medicine bag would be good for this, but I don't see anything. Does anybody else have anything that would be good for this?"

"I have a healing potion," Nott said behind him, "Here, it's here in my coat pocket, I have it with me." She squeezed his shoulder. "Have to be ready, in case you get hurt."

This time, he managed to get the words out of his mouth and not just out of his brain, "No," he said, voice coming out soft through his ragged throat, "No, I am fine. I am not injured. I will be ok."

"You don't look ok," Nott answered seriously, "And you don't _feel_ ok. You shouldn't be having trouble sitting up like this."

"Yeah, and there's the puking," Beau said, "That's not really - I mean, it's better than _bleeding_ but it's not really _fine_ , either."

"I don't need a healing potion," he insisted, "I will sleep it off. We can save it for when it matters more." Then the words making it out of his mouth betrayed him, as a thought that he'd usually hold in tumbled on out with the rest. "We can save it for somebody better."

"Oh, Caleb," Jester said again, sounding sad, and he hated it, but he wasn't sure his face was glaring right because everything felt weird and now his eyes seemed to be watering, which he thought probably wasn't right for a glare.

"Alright," Fjord said, calm and steady and decisive. "So we're trying the healing potion, then. You keep holding him up, Nott, and I'll give it to him."

Caleb clamped his mouth shut, shaking his head no, but the motion made him dizzy again and he had to gasp for breath as his head reeled.

"Yasha, can you hold his head?"

Fjord was all business, in that way he got sometimes where you couldn't argue or you'd get steamrolled, and Caleb glared at him. He was pretty sure he'd managed the glare better this time, but Fjord was still going. "Which pocket do you keep the potion in, Nott? You'd maybe better keep your hands on his shoulders."

"It's alright, Caleb," Molly said, leaning onto the edge of the cart and forward a little, "We wouldn't use it on you if we didn't think you were worth it."

Somehow that stung less than Jester's pity, but he sort of resented the way it didn't sting. "Fuck you, Molly."

Molly just laughed, like the gigantic asshole he was, and said "Fuck you, too," in a tone of voice that didn't mean fuck you at all, and Caleb was still trying to work out whether he'd meant the first one, either, when Yasha and Fjord were suddenly both holding onto him, pinching his nose shut and pouring the healing potion down his throat so he had to swallow it.

It was unpleasant without the usual rush of healing that was supposed to come with it. He'd rarely noticed how bad healing potions tasted, because usually they felt so good the taste didn't matter, but now - now it was almost a small victory to puke it back up again as soon as he tried to pull away from Nott and sit up on his own.

"Ewww!" Jester exclaimed, but she sounded more delighted than horrified. Caleb had never particularly wanted to curl up in a puddle of his own vomit and ignore everyone else in the world, but right now, he did.

"Yeah, we're, uh - we're gonna have to clean that up somehow, yeah? Or get him out of it, anyway?" Beau said.

"How?" Molly said, "He's not gonna be able to sit on a horse like this, probably not even with Yasha."

"I can hold him up," Yasha answered calmly, confidently, and for a moment, Caleb felt a little bit better, like maybe he could escape to the relative safely of just her company - until Molly frowned.

"For how long, though? The whole rest of the day's travel? That's awfully far to carry that much weight without losing your strength or your balance. No offense, Caleb."

He tried to say something back, maybe "none taken" and maybe another "fuck you," but neither came out.

"Well, we can't leave him to sit in his own puke, either," Fjord said, "Jester and Yasha can drag him out for a little bit and we can clean it up before we get going again. It was about time for a short rest anyway, and I'm pretty sure there's a stream a little ways ahead on the map. We've got a couple of buckets and we can send somebody for water."

"But what are we going to do when we get going again?" Nott asked, "He's really sick."

"Well, I figure we take it in shifts to sit with him, and if we don't try to feed him again, we probably don't get puked on."

Caleb's brain and his mouth linked up again, and betrayed him again, and what made its way out after all that was, "I don't puke seawater, like you, Fjord. I puke . . . puke."

"Yeah, Caleb, we noticed that. But don't worry about it. We're gonna take care of you. _Aren't we_ , Jester?"

Jester had been not-so-subtly backing up before she could get assigned vomit-cleaning duty, but as soon as Caleb's attention was on her in full, she broke out into a huge smile.

"Of course, of course! Don't you worry about a _thing_ Caleb, we'll just get everything nice and clean, and then when we leave again, Molly can go slower, and me and Nott will look after you, and then when we stop for the night we can make some nice _soup_ or something for your tummy, like when I was little and my mamma would order me some good soup when I didn't feel good, and I don't think we have all the things for that soup, because it was very _fancy_ soup, but you know, you can make soup out of _anything_ , really. And then you'll feel better!" She finished with a grin, and he let himself lean back into Nott's grip, wishing he could just disappear.

Jester was still staring and he tipped his head back to look away from her, resting it on Nott's shoulder and finding himself unexpectedly peering upward into Yasha's face. She was studying him calmly, but he wasn't sure for what, and when she said, "I'll take the first shift with him after we get cleaned up," he closed his eyes more from relief than anything else.

Once his eyes were shut, it was harder still to do anything about any of this, like the mere fact of the darkness behind his eyes had given free rein to the exhaustion running through him.

Jester and Yasha lifted him out of the back of the cart like he weighed less than Frumpkin, and that was alright, and then he was shaking and dizzy on the grass, and that was better than the cart until it was suddenly, somehow, worse, and he was rolling over to puke again.

Nott stood over him while he threw up, rubbing his back, and when he was done, Molly was suddenly there easing him out of his vomit-spattered clothing so quickly and casually that it didn't occur to him to try to stop it. The tiefling left him his underwear, or he might have fought back, and he wasn't naked for long before he was being wrapped so thoroughly in a blanket that it was all he could do to keep his arms free. Molly arranged the folds of the blanket carefully and then tied a belt around his waist to keep it together.

Beau gave him grief about making everyone else clean up his mess, but after she dumped the last bucket of clean water unceremoniously over his head, she squatted down to wipe his face and her hands were surprisingly gentle, clearing the water away from his eyes almost tenderly before she gave his beard a somewhat rougher rub-down.

By the time he was back in the cart with Yasha's large form nearly curled around him in the smallish open space, even the most minor thought didn't seem to make it from his brain to his muscles, and not long after they started rolling, he felt himself drifting off.

 

* * *

 

Beau didn't _like_ feeling this way. Hearing Caleb puke in the back of the cart had been gross, but almost funny until she saw how awful he looked. Watching him shiver like this, shaking so hard she could see it even in the firelight and even though he was wrapped in two extra blankets and (now that he'd stopped puking) Molly's tapestry, wasn't funny at all. Not even with Nott's tiny limbs sticking out awkwardly as she slept literally on top of him.

She adjusted her legs to keep the left one from falling asleep, looking out around the edges of their camp and beyond. They'd hoped to make it to the next town, but they'd lost a lot of time looking after Caleb, and then they'd driven slower, and they just hadn't made it. They'd found a nice open clearing a little before dark, and they hadn't wanted to press their luck at continuing to push with Caleb sleeping so hard that even Yasha talking beside his head didn't wake him. Riding in the back of the cart was easier than riding a horse, but he never slept this hard, and she didn't think any of them felt bad about being cautious with him.

Caleb hadn't managed more than 3 bites of the actually surprisingly good soup they'd managed to make together, and old sayings about too many cooks be damned, but he hadn't thrown it up, and that was good. She just had to remind herself that that was good.

Fjord was sharing the watch with her, but he'd seemed happy to let her have Caleb duty while he prioritized watching around their perimeter. As she looked across the fire at him, watching him study the sky in between checks, she almost wished she hadn't volunteered to sit over here.

After a few minutes, he noticed her eyes on him and got up with a soft half-grunt, coming over and sitting down right beside her, but facing outward instead of inward. "You alright?" he asked quietly.

"Yeah," she said, sighing, "I'm just not a big fan of watching things go bad when there's nothing I can do to fix them."

Fjord looked over his shoulder at Caleb. "He'll be fine. We'll be in town early tomorrow. Place that small, they probably don't have a hospital, but I bet they have some kinda somebody who can help." He smiled, "And anyway, you don't always have to fix it. I bet he appreciates you just looking out."

She scowled, "Yeah, that's real reassuring. 'Oh, Caleb, I watched you sleep. You were shaking like a motherfucker, but I couldn't do anything about it.' Exactly what he wants to hear."

Fjord shrugged. "Maybe not. But he let Yasha breathe on him for like an hour earlier, and I'm pretty sure she's been eating rats again, so you watching him can't be _that_ bad."

"I mean, I think she brushed her teeth." It wasn't an answer to the real conversation, just a knee-jerk reaction because she had a hard time imagining it was unpleasant to be close to Yasha's face, but Fjord let it go, and there was something comforting about knowing he got her, or at least that he knew when she'd gotten his point.

When she just couldn't take the stillness anymore, she told Fjord she was going to take a piss and walk the perimeter, but she couldn't quite let herself do it until she'd tugged the end of Molly's tapestry over Caleb's feet a little bit better.

 

* * *

 

 

Caleb's head reeled as they drove through town, but Nott was pressed up against his side, her mask securely on, and with her help, he managed to stay upright.

Molly had helped him back into his clean clothes this morning, a process that should have been less embarrassing than being stripped, but somehow wasn't, because it had occurred to him that he should be able to do it himself. Even so, he doubted he looked normal with the layers of extra blankets his friends had piled on top of him after they'd helped him into the cart.

If all he could do to avoid drawing extra attention was sit up instead of lie down, that was what he was going to do, and he made it his sole focus, trying to tune out the town as they rode through. The sun was too bright and the noises were too loud and the motion of the cart was too irregular, but he could sit up. _Would_ sit up.

His head pounded harder and harder, and the persistent ache in his whole body wasn't helped by sitting up when he still wanted nothing more than to curl up on his side and pull his arms and legs in on himself, but he was determined to make it to the inn they'd been recommended without collapsing into the back of the cart and making a spectacle of himself. Better to seem to be recovering than actively sick, especially in a new town where they never knew if they'd be trusted.

He stayed upright to the front of the inn. He crawled to the back of the cart with only a little help from Nott. He let Jester help him to the ground, because it seemed easier than trying to get her not to shout about her "patient" overdoing himself, but made it well enough. He stood on his feet, steadying himself, while Nott climbed down, too. He forced his eyes to focus on her, even as his head spun again. He even faked a smile at Nott as he turned toward the inn's doors.

Three steps later, his foot caught the edge of a cobblestone, and his ankle wobbled, and he was too dizzy to adjust for it, and Jester could keep him from falling, but couldn't keep the sudden lurch from jostling his stomach, and then he was twisted sideways, puking down Jester's front, and his cover was definitely - literally - blown.

"That's _gross_ , Caleb. You should have gotten it on you instead of me, because we were going to wash your clothes again anyway now that we have pump water instead of a mucky stream." She didn't sound too upset, and he supposed he was lucky to have teamed up with a healer who thought it was funny to draw dicks on things and make poop jokes, instead of somebody more squeamish.

Either way, it was a relief to be passed off to Yasha, who didn't hold onto him as much as she just held an arm out and let him grab her elbow as needed to steady himself, and a bigger relief for Molly to offer to go arrange and pay for the rooms with a lilt in his voice that suggested nothing was wrong at all.

Fjord and Beau busied themselves with taking care of the cart, making sure everything was tucked away where it should be, but Nott had stayed by him, and it was nice to have her at his elbow, too.

"Are you alright, Caleb?"

"Ja," he managed, "Just lost my footing a little. I told Jester I didn't need any bread this morning."

Nott scowled, "You have to _eat_ , though, Caleb. You're so skinny already, and you won't get better if you don't."

He wanted to argue with her, if just to get everyone to stop fretting so much, but standing was hard enough, and leaning more heavily on Yasha wouldn't get anyone to calm down, either, so he just said, "Maybe."

Molly came out beaming about having gotten four rooms, and he didn't argue about that either, because while it felt strange to let Mollymauk spend money to get him a room of his own when the others were sharing, it would also keep them from getting sick with whatever this was and - if he was lucky - it might keep them out of his hair.

"Thank you," he said quietly, surprised when Molly stepped close to kiss him on the forehead in response. Not out of his hair, then, but at least Molly didn't seem upset when he wobbled in surprise and had to be steadied again, this time by all three of the others because they were already in his space.

"You're welcome."

Caleb would usually nod, but he couldn't risk it, so he acknowledged the reply with an even softer, "Ja."

Molly squeezed his hand before letting go, and Caleb put the newly empty hand on Nott's shoulder because he wasn't sure what else to do with it.

Then they were moving, and he had to be careful of the cobblestones, but Yasha didn't try to hurry ahead like Jester did, and he could do it. They walked in through the doors a little awkwardly, crossed the tavern without incident as Nott and Yasha steered him between tables, and reached the stairs, where he immediately realized he was going to have to accept some help again.

He paused at the bottom, grimacing for a moment, then swallowed his pride and tugged at Yasha until he could whisper in her ear, "Please, while the bar is still empty, can you help me up the stairs?"

Even now he couldn't ask to be carried. He almost couldn't wrap his head around trusting someone that much, but here they were, and the stairs were steep, and it was a relief when Molly made a subtle hand motion and Yasha picked him up entirely.

"I think like this will be better for your stomach," she said gently, and he wasn't sure how to tell her he didn't mind being carried like a bride, just now, other than by wrapping his arms around her neck and holding on.

Nott climbed up the stairs behind them. "I'm sure it's not too bad. He's very light. We need to feed him up once we get him upstairs. So he gets better."

Luckily, _blessedly_ , Yasha was fast on the stairs, and his room wasn't too far down the hall, close enough that he could pretend not to notice that she hadn't put him down yet. He tuned out whatever conversation Molly and Nott were having about "filling in his hollows," which might have been some kind of double entendre (probably was, knowing his friends) but which he couldn't even begin to parse with everything else going on.

Falling asleep in the soft bed was the best thing he'd felt in at least 24 hours, and he was asleep almost as soon as Yasha put him down, nearly before Nott had finished arranging blankets over him, and long before his friends had decided what to do with him.

 

* * *

 

As Beau watched Caleb sleep for the second time in 24 hours, she couldn't help thinking that she really needed to stop fighting things for the sake of fighting them. She'd had an out. When they'd talked about where to find a doctor, Fjord had brought up the possibility that if this was a human illness, Beau could catch it and should probably stay away. She'd told him to fuck off, because Caleb was _her_ friend, too, and now here she was, trapped with a sleeping wizard for a sixth of the day. Fantastic.

She started doing pushups just for something to do, amusing herself by looking under the bed for bugs or cobwebs or anything interesting she might have found in a less well-kept inn, then craning her neck at the top of the pushup to look at Caleb on top of the bed. It was only fun while she was limbering up, and stopped being fun when it started to feel like pushing herself, and she went to sit on the floor in front of the chair in the corner instead, wondering exactly how long Nott was going to be with food.

As Nott set off to get lunch, she'd reassured Beau that since Caleb was sick, anything she brought back would have to meet her "exacting standards," a phrase that had been hard not to laugh at given that she'd watched Nott eat moldy pastries, rats, and mysterious pickled meats they'd found by the side of the road. But now she couldn't help wondering if the goblin had been serious.

After a few more minutes of sitting, she got up again and moved the chair, putting its back parallel to the footboard of the bed and propping herself up between them, with one hand on each. She tried to let herself down and then push back up again, but the chair wouldn't cooperate, tipping so that she almost fell, and she gave up with a snort, putting the chair back in its corner and sitting in it.

Caleb had seemed to be doing better when they got up this morning, but now she wasn't so sure. She'd half expected him to wake up to watch her near-tumble, just to embarrass her. Instead, he was sleeping hard, and she thought he might be starting to shiver again.

If he was, it wasn't as obvious as it had been during that first watch last night, but that wasn't saying much. She watched for a few more minutes and then got up to check, just in case. She couldn't do anything about it if he was shaking again, but at least she could _know_.

Usually, a light touch to his shoulder would have been enough to wake him up, but now she placed her entire hand against his side and he didn't stir. He just quivered, definitely shivering again. "Shit, buddy," she whispered under her breath, "That's a bad sign."

The whisper didn't wake him up, either. Even Nott's entrance at normal volume didn't do that, and something in Nott's face wouldn't let her ditch the end of her shift even with Nott back and sitting at the foot of the bed to be close to Caleb.

By the time the others made it back from scouring the town for anything that might help, there was no denying it. He was getting worse. She was starting to wonder if seeming better this morning hadn't just been good old-fashioned Zemnian stubbornness. Caleb was squishy, and they all said it, but he was also an asshole, and she wouldn't put it past him to get better out of _spite_ when they tried to make him take medicine he didn't want and then worse again when there weren't enough people around to be spiteful to.

The others were audible coming up the stairs - she'd know Jester's voice anywhere - and she nodded to Nott as she slipped out the door to meet her.

"Beau!" Jester said, hurrying up to the doorway. She seemed cheerful, and there was a brown paper bag of something in her hand.

"What did you find?" Beau asked, jumping in before Jester could start a whole long story about their shopping trip.

"We found medicine! Basically. I mean, _technically_ , it's different than what comes in a healer's kit, technically, but that's good, because we had one of those and we didn't have what we needed and also because _technically_ healing potions don't work, but this is gonna work, probably. The man at the shop was human too, and he said there's bugs a couple of days back along the road and they spread this thing that sounds like what Caleb has, and that's the good news, Beau, because if you don't have it now you won't get it because we didn't bring any bugs with us, just Caleb, but the bad news is that we can give this to him, but he'll get worse before he gets better."

Beau waited Jester out, wincing at the end. "That's not good. He's _already_ getting worse."

"Oh no! Caleb!" she pushed past Beau, into the room, and Beau wasn't sure whether to follow or not, because she wasn't sure she wanted to be in charge of this.

"Worse _how_?" Fjord asked thoughtfully.

"Worse like he was yesterday. He hasn't barfed again, but he's shaking and it's getting harder instead of lighter."

Fjord nodded, "So more of a... smaller rally than we thought, and less of a sudden dying kind of thing, right?"

Beau sighed. "I guess? I don't like it. We got him to town. He's in a nice bed and out of the cart. He's supposed to be getting _better_."

"You and I both know that's not how it works. This town isn't _magic_."

She slugged him on the shoulder, not pulling it quite as much as she did when it was really a joke. "You know what I mean."

He rubbed his arm a little bit, but didn't seem bothered. "I do."

She sighed, "Let's get in there before Jester gives him too much of that stuff and it _is_ a sudden dying kind of thing."

 

* * *

 

Caleb was barely awake when Jester shoved a cup full of some kind of sludgy concoction into his hands and told him to drink it, and then she was helping him sit up, and Nott had come forward nearly into his lap and he didn't even notice Beau and Fjord looking a little bit nervous until after he'd finished drinking the stuff.

"Ok, there you go!" Jester said, "It's going to cure you! It won't be as fast as cure wounds, of course, but it's still a cure! Isn't that great? And we're going to be _right here_ until you're _all better_ , just in case something _weird_ happens like you feel worse before you feel better, but I'm _sure_ you'll feel better very soon. Just, like I said, not right away, because for this you _can't_ technically get better right away, _technically_ , but I'm sure soon."

He couldn't tell for a moment whether she was talking in circles more than usual or whether it was just harder to follow because of the faint dizziness the medicine had had no immediate effect on. Either way, Jester could be tiring even when he was at his best and right now he wasn't. He squeezed his eyes shut.

Usually, Beau's abrasiveness wasn't necessarily _comforting_ , but when she cleared her throat, sounding a little bit like he felt with Jester chattering against his headache, he felt good. He felt even better when she followed it up with, "So, uh, pretty sure it's your turn on Caleb Watch, Fjord. Isn't it?"

"Oh! Uh, yeah. It's definitely my turn."

"Oh, no, Fjord, don't worry about it, you can go later, and I can stay now, because I just gave him his medicine and we _don't know how fast it's going to work_ , and-"

Caleb groaned, rolling over onto his side with his back to them, and hoped it would help Beau and Fjord do what they were clearly trying to, which was get him some quiet away from Jester until the medicine could kick in. Instead, they argued about it until he was sorely tempted to slap his hands over his ears like a petulant child and order them out.

Beau had that sound in her voice that always seemed to come with an enormous phony smile, and Fjord hesitated a little more than usual like he was trying to read her before he talked, and Caleb let out another groan, hoping this one would work.

It did and it didn't. The others didn't seem to notice, but he felt the motion in the mattress as Nott stood up and stepped over his legs, staring the others down from the edge of the bed.

Caleb rolled over again, carefully, to watch as she insisted on taking the next shift, and maybe the one after that, and promised she'd message them if they needed anything, as long as they stayed downstairs.

It was a relief, and he couldn't tell what Nott looked like from this angle, but it must have been fierce, because they went. That was a relief, too. He sighed, reaching up one arm to rub at his temple. His arm and shoulder were sore, too, which simply wasn't _fair_ , but the soft massage did more for his headache than Jester's slime had, and Nott seemed content to leave him to it.

"Thank you," he said, almost at a whisper, "They are - a lot to take right now."

"I know," she said, "They're a bunch of weirdos. But we'll call them if we need them. If you get worse. Don't get worse."

"Of course," he answered. He'd been worse, before, but only at death's door, and unless Jester had accidentally given him poison, that didn't seem like a place he'd be heading.

"Are you hungry?"

"No," he answered honestly, "I'm sure I should be, but I mostly just hurt. And I'm very tired. But I don't want to throw up that - stuff. It was worse than the healing potion. And I'm sure this time I would have to take it again."

"Oh, yes," Nott observed, "You'd have to taste it three times, that way. In and out and in again. Maybe you'd better just sleep for a bit. Eat something when you wake up."

"Ok," he agreed, moving slowly and carefully as he got comfortable, to avoid jostling his stomach. Sometimes sleeping on his side had its disadvantages, but at least he wasn't accustomed to sleeping on his tummy.

He could sense Nott watching him for a little while, but then there was a shift in the mattress again as she climbed around him and sat down against the footboard. Having a solid little mass near his feet was reassuring, after these last months, and he breathed a little easier. He thought perhaps he should call Frumpkin back out of his other dimension, but as good as it would feel to have his cat here, purring against him, it wasn't quite effortless, and he was so tired. Too tired, maybe.

He heard the tell-tale sounds of buttons clacking as Nott dumped her button bag onto the bed, his headache intensifying the noise. He only minded for a moment before the steady, rhythmic clicking of the buttons getting added back into the bag, one by one, as Nott counted them in her head, became soothing instead of irritating. 

He fell asleep.

The next flashes of wakefulness were confusing, coming to him in snatches when they came at all.

There was noise, deafening noise, and when he opened his eyes, everything was blurry, but his friends were different colors, so it wasn't too confusing. Except for the part where he couldn't figure out why he couldn't see, and when he picked his head up to try to clear it, there was shouting, and it hurt, and he had to close his eyes again before he could work it out.

Nott was shredding a pillow case into very very small pieces, and there were feathers everywhere, and he wondered absently if she was going to start collecting feathers now. They wouldn't be totally useless, he didn't think. Finally, he remembered why. "Featherfall," he whispered.

Nott whirled around. "Caleb!"

He reached his hand out, wincing as the soreness he couldn't explain made even that painful, and flinching again when the wince hurt, but he managed to drape his fingers across a feather on the floor beside his bed, and it was soft against his skin.

Nott's hug hurt less than moving did, and he picked the feather up and tucked it behind her ear, but he was so tired that it was hard to focus on her face, and then harder, and then harder, and then his eyes were closing again.

It was dark, mostly, but there was a candle burning in the corner. Focusing on it was hard at first, but he closed one eye and it got easier to see with the other, and he realized Jester was sitting there, hunched over her sketchbook and writing something frantically. He'd never seen her frown like this - not like _this_ \- and his face pulled into a frown to match hers.

He opened his other eye and was immediately struck by the difference between his two eyes, one adjusted to the darkness and one adjusted to looking at Jester's corner. He blinked until they were the same again, even though looking at Jester that way made him dizzy and it was hard to see her face again. It must be late. He should be sleeping. She should, too. But she'd talked about writing to the Traveler at night before, so maybe this was normal.

"That's the deal," she whispered, "You help me out with Caleb, and that's the deal."

He wanted to ask what the deal was, but if his eyes worked funny, his mouth probably would, too, and he closed his eyes again, to work up the energy to make the talking work, and before he could do it, he was asleep again.

The nightmares came after that, and he was trying to find his parents, but he couldn't, and he was waiting for the fire, could feel the heat, but couldn't see the fire, and that wasn't right, because he needed to find them first, and because there was supposed to be fire, but he didn't want fire and he _did_ want fire, and when he woke up, he needed to sit up, _had_ to sit up to get out of the dream, but his stomach betrayed him when he tried to do it too fast.

There was nothing in him to throw up, but he retched and coughed anyway. Nott woke up as soon as he moved, and Molly was on the floor and he wasn't sure why, but Molly was fast with a bucket Caleb couldn't puke into because there was nothing there to throw up, and Nott was helping him stay upright and rubbing his arm where she could reach, and he got control of himself.

"Illness or nightmares?" Molly asked.

"Both," he croaked, but he couldn't say any more and apparently didn't need to.

"Sit tight."

By the time Molly got back he thought it had probably not been very long, but Nott had helped him back down onto his side, and Molly putting wet cloths on the back of his neck and the front of his head and holding them gently in place seemed like overkill, but he was already falling back asleep and at least they were real, and not a dream, and maybe that could be enough.

It was strange to wake up when it was _very_ light in the room. He woke up often when it was a little bit light, but not when it was a lot light. A lot light. He chuckled at the thought, at how many l sounds it had in it, and Yasha's voice said, "Caleb?" but he couldn't tell where she was because he didn't want to move his head.

"A lot light," he said. "Llll."

He thought he should say more, but he was preoccupied by the fact that he seemed to be drooling and might have been for a while, but maybe pillows were ok to drool on, and Nott had already ripped one, so drooling wasn't as bad as that, and pillows were nice, and his eyes were slipping closed again.

The next time he woke up, there was a cool, damp cloth across part of his forehead, and it felt good, and he slipped back into sleep.

He didn't know how he'd gotten on his back, but the cloth was damp and warm now, and it wasn't so good, but tossing his head to get rid of it made him dizzy and he had to close his eyes and he couldn't see who put the new cloth, cooler and also wet, on his forehead, but it was nice, and they murmured "shhh," and then he could feel a second damp cloth against his eyelids and it was darker behind his closed eyes, and it was easy to slip back into sleep again.

He woke again in the hottest part of the day, the sun's rays coming straight in through the window. He felt hot and cold all at once, the two temperatures running through him one right after the other until he thought it might kill him, and he stared blankly at the ceiling, and Beau's face appeared above him, on the other side of her hand, which was on his forehead, and then she was cursing.

"Shit. Message Jester and Fjord, he's even hotter now. We've gotta do _something_ better to cool him down."

Nott said something, but his body went from hot to cold as she did, and it was very distracting. The waves of temperature didn't come in any kind of set pattern and he didn't like that. He didn't like it at all. "Clock," he said, hoping a good steady ticking would set him right again, "Clockworks."

There was noise, and it was person noise, and he knew the voices, but he couldn't make words out of them. He was hot. He was cold. Some of the words were wording right. Armor. Ice. Were they supposed to be fighting? He couldn't fight right now. Maybe he could fight right now. When he felt hot, it was like everything was fire and he was good at fire.

"Maybe," one of the voices said. Who was it? It paused. "Maybe," it said again. It was Fjord. "But I can't cast it around him, only around me."

"I cast - " Caleb gasped out, "I cast - Fire-"

"No," Jester interrupted, "No, Caleb not now, right now you rest, ok, cleric's orders. Traveller's orders. You have to rest."

"No," Caleb said, "I cast-"

"Shit." It was Fjord again. "I'm doing it."

"You cast different," Caleb managed.

Fjord was distracted. And shiny. It took him a moment to answer. "Yeah, man, I do. I sure do. Good catch. Here, Jester, see if this works."

Jester was scratching at Fjord's chest, which seemed weird if they were supposed to be in a fight. Were they fighting each other?

"No!" she said, and she sounded upset, and that wasn't cool. Wasn't cool. Caleb tried to sit up, but he didn't try to sit up, because his body didn't move, and that was weird. Bad weird. He made a soft distressed noise and Nott grabbed his foot from her seat at the foot of the bed.

"It's not real enough!" Jester said, and he understood, because moving wasn't real enough either, because he meant to be moving and he wasn't.

"Fuck it, new strategy," Beau was here, too, and he wanted to look at her, but he couldn't seem to do it until she'd grabbed his wrist and even then, his head only flopped sideways, in her general direction.

"You in there, buddy? Yeah. I'm really hoping this doesn't hurt you a ton, but at this point I figure we've got enough healing magic queued up to fix it if it does." She folded his fingers into a fist, but he couldn't figure out what she was trying to do, so he couldn't help, and then when he tried to, she was yelling at him about his thumb and letting her do it, but then he had a fist and she took his wrist and pulled it forward and socked Fjord in the armor.

He felt a little bit of cold, a very little bit, and he figured out that she had too when she cursed again, but when she put her hand back on his forehead, turning his face back up toward the ceiling for a better grip, it was ice cold and felt good enough that he hummed happily in spite of himself.

"Oh," Beau muttered, "Ok. Ok, ok, ok. At least that works."

"Are you sure?" Fjord asked, "We can't do that forever."

"We can do it long enough. Jester can find something better."

"Or I can steal something!" 

Caleb reached for the foot of the bed. "Nott."

"Yes, Caleb, I'm right here."

He'd meant to say something. Something. He'd lost it. "Ok," he said.

The ceiling was boring, but at least looking at it wasn't work, and Beau's hand was cold and Nott's was familiar around his ankle, and then everything was going dark again.

The nightmares came in earnest after that, and they didn't make sense. They didn't make sense. He was looking for horses, but all he could find were statues. Statues couldn't run. He needed them to run. He wasn't sure why. Because they had the cart. But they didn't. Nobody made statues of carts. The horses needed to run, because the cart needed to move because the cart, the cart. He was turning into a statue, too, and his feet couldn't move, and his knees couldn't move, and he couldn't twist and his arms were solidifying and everything was hot and -

His limbs flailed wildly on the bed and Beau cursed and Fjord pinned him down, and his armor was cold, and Fjord said, "Whoa, there," but whoa wasn't right.

"No," he gasped, "Run. They have to run."

"Caleb, what are you talking about?" Nott asked.

"It was just a dream," Beau said.

Fjord punched himself in the chest, hard, wincing, and his hand was cold when he put it on Caleb's forehead. "We're trying to cool you down, Caleb. Just hang in there."

Caleb fell asleep, but it was into another dream. This dream was hot, too.

 

* * *

 

" _Fuck,"_ Beau said, again, for what felt like the thousandth time since Caleb went from catatonic to crazy, crying out in his sleep and lashing out both asleep and awake, without any more awareness behind his eyes when he was awake than when he wasn't.

"Yeah," Fjord gasped, moving just fast enough to catch a flailing arm before Caleb hit Nott again. They hadn't asked her to leave, but if she got hit again, one of them would have to, and that lingering echo in her head of "He's _my_ boy" be damned.

"How many more times can you cast that thing?" she asked.

Fjord grunted. "I don't know anymore. How many more times can you do that stunning thing?"

She sighed, breathing upward to ruffle her bangs and the little bit of extra not-bang that had come loose from its usual knot. "Not enough, if he keeps lashing out like this. I don't think he knows where he is. That guy at the shop didn't say this stuff would _melt his brain_ , did he?"

Fjord grunted again, rearranging his grip to pin Caleb down at the right angle for a really effective stunning strike. "Nope."

They'd sent Molly and Yasha back down the road to where the disease came from as soon as they realized how much worse Caleb had gotten overnight, but it was too much to hope that they'd be back soon with something helpful from people they didn't even remember passing on the road. It was a long shot, and they all knew it, and this was the  _worst_. All she could really keep hoping for was that Jester would come back with some kind of stopgap remedy that would knock down the fever enough for the original medicine to take out the rest of this nasty whatever-it-was, and all she could _do_ was punch him, which was of very limited use in this situation.

She lined up her hand just how she wanted it and hit Caleb again, and his body stiffened and stopped flailing, stunned. She heaved a sigh of relief and relaxed, watching Nott climb over Caleb and rearrange his limbs into a more comfortable position yet again, the muscles relaxing a hair as they were rearranged, but not enough to break the stun.

"I hate this," she said, "This  _can't_ be helping with the nightmares. I mean, it's better than letting him hurt himself or us, but-"

Fjord looked exhausted. "Yeah, I know. But if we move the bed where he can't hit himself against the walls, he'll probably just fling himself out of it and that's not great, either."

"I feel bad hurting him," she said, and sometimes it would be a half-lie meant to make her companions feel better, but right now it was all the way true. How bad  _would_ it be to let him sleep on the floor? But even then, there would be furniture to hit and it would be harder to keep his blankets on him when he started trying to wiggle out.

Fjord slipped an arm around her shoulder, sighing. "Well, at least he isn't the one taking all the cold damage. My hand stings."

"Yeah," she agreed, "Me too."

Nott was standing over Caleb again, taking this moment of peace to look him over.

"We should roll him on his side," she said, "He sleeps on his side more often. Maybe it'll make the nightmares better. Maybe it won't make him feel so trapped, even if he _is_ stunned."

For a moment, she and Fjord just stood there, leaning into each other, but then Fjord agreed to it. "Yeah. Yeah, good idea. I got it."

Beau nodded, taking the opportunity to sink into one of the extra chairs they'd hauled in here from their rooms. Fjord helped Nott rearrange Caleb, then collapsed into the chair next to her like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

"Any word on Jester?" he asked.

Nott looked Caleb over one more time and picked up her little copper wire. "Jester, how are things going out there? You _can_ reply to this message."

Whatever reply she got made Nott's eyebrows shoot up.

"Yeah?" Beau prompted.

"I don't think that was meant to be a reply. She's yelling at someone. I hope she won't be long."

Fjord's grunt was clearly agreement, but Beau was too tired and on edge to really latch onto the hope. This was a shitshow, and her best solution was to hurt the guy she was trying to help, and this wasn't _exactly_ the reason she'd decided for a while not to care about people, but it wasn't too far off.

"I wonder what he's dreaming about." Fjord said absently.

Beau met Nott's eyes. They knew, or at least, they had some pretty decent guesses, but it wasn't their story to tell.

"Well, when he wakes up, we'll tell him how we've all looked after him, and maybe that'll be a better thing to dream about."

Sentimental. But Beau couldn't quite disagree. "Yeah," she told Nott, "That'll be nice. Not sure it's how dreams work, but it's nice."

"Do _you_ know how dreams work?"

"No, but I-"

"Then maybe he _will_ have nice dreams." Nott's nostrils flared a little, her face solidifying into a familiar stubbornness, and Beau didn't bother rising to the bait. Not when she had to watch Caleb for when he got control back of his body. Or not-control, since she couldn't imagine him kicking Nott in the face on purpose.

"Sure," she said, "Maybe he will."

Fjord hauled himself up to get another cup of water for the next time his Armor of Agathys ran out, and Caleb slept peacefully enough until he came back, and they sat again, watching again, for what she thought - or at least hoped - was a little bit longer than before.

In any other case, it wouldn't have been a relief when Caleb started whimpering in his sleep and curled in tighter on himself. But it was a step up from flailing, and nobody was going to get hurt by it, other than maybe Caleb, and Caleb hurting was just their reality right now, so it didn't pay to dwell on it. Of course, not dwelling on it was hard when she was sitting here specifically to stare at him.

"You wanna try another compress?" Fjord whispered.

"I dunno," she answered, "Don't wanna set him off."

Whatever he was dreaming now, it was distressing, the whimpers escalating into soft cries, but he was still tightly wound, and he was still not hitting out, and she leaned forward but didn't move. Didn't move. He sank back out of it, or at least got quieter, and she leaned back in her seat again, watching Nott stare at him like she was thinking of grabbing hold of him again. Before Beau could warn her off it, she relaxed into the footboard again, apparently reaching the same conclusion. Better to leave him alone, while he was medium bad instead of all bad.

"Hey, Beau," Fjord said, "You remember that thing you said the other night? About fixing things?"

She nodded. "Yeah."

"I'm startin' to think you're right about that. This sucks."

"I'll drink to that," Nott said, taking a swig out of her flask for the first time in a while. She was more likely to drink when things were quiet like this, which wasn't what Beau was used to with her, but it almost made sense. Almost.

She was right at the edge of letting herself think something maudlin about feelings being as scary as battle when Jester walked in and saved her from herself, her blue face almost glowing with fury.

" _I went_ ," she said, " _Five places_ before somebody could help me, because I guess, I _guess_ there was some kind of other sickness here a few weeks ago and 'supplies are low' and he tried to charge me _so much gold_ for this medicine, but I remembered that Caleb would be mad at us for spending money on him even though I _wanted_ to spend _money_ on him to make him better, but I didn't want to stress him out if he knew about it or figured it out, and I had to talk _forever_ to make him give it to me for less, so I'm _sorry_ that I'm _late_ , but technically, _technically_ it's not my fault."

Jester stepped past their chairs and up to the bed, opening another bag and taking out a large glass vial and then a small cup. "He's supposed to take only some of it, and then a little more if it's needed to get the fever down." She waved the full vial, "Multiple uses."

Then she stopped. "He's whimpering!"

"Yeah," Beau said, "We know. He kinda stopped for a little bit, but I'm not surprised he's doing it again. He's been having bad dreams. Like that one before you left."

Jester scowled. "And you've just been letting him _sleep_? Poor Caleb! I _hate_ bad dreams."

"Yeah, well-" Beau started, but before she could finish, Jester was reaching for Caleb's shoulder.

Beau jumped to her feet, ready to pull Jester out of the way if he got wild again. She didn't doubt that Jester could pin Caleb down easily enough, but he was unpredictable asleep, and it had taken a while to adjust to the irrational flailing.

Instead, Caleb rolled over toward them, calm for once, though there didn't seem to be much going on in his eyes. It was creepy, his eyes being that blank without the internal flicker that meant he was watching through Frumpkin.

She half wondered whether Frumpkin would be helping or hurting if Caleb had been able to call him back yet. He always seemed to calm Caleb down, but she wanted to wrestle an irrational dream-fighting cat even less than she wanted to fight Caleb. At least Caleb didn't have claws.

Jester shook him again, then reached up to feel his forehead. "Caleb. Oh! You're burning up!"

His eyes focused again, and Beau could almost watch him coming back to them before he answered, "Then let me." It was bitter and angry, and sent an icy feeling into the pit of her stomach.

She locked eyes with Nott as Jester frowned and said "No, no, no," but the goblin didn't seem to have any better idea of what to say.

"Sit up, Caleb," Jester continued, "We're going to give you a little bit of medicine, only a little bit this time, I _promise_ , and it's going to be way better than the other medicine and it's going to make it so you can get through the first medicine and the sickness you had before and you're going to be _all better_."

"Jester?" he asked, soft and confused.

Beau rolled her eyes. Of course. Of _course_ Caleb had been beating on everyone else for ages and as soon as Jester got here he was fine.

"Asshole," she muttered under her breath.

She wasn't sure which of them she meant, if she even meant either.

"I'll help you, Caleb," Nott said, apparently right back to her old self even after all the caution and the two kicks to the face. "Let's sit up."

"Nott," he said, grabbing for her hands and holding them in his. "You're alright," he pulled their linked hands closer, staring at them with eyes that still weren't all there. "But, of course, you weren't there, really. I'm being silly."

"Well, be _less_ silly and take your medicine!" Jester said cheerfully, and this time Caleb didn't refuse, and Beau was one part relieved, one part annoyed all over again that he couldn't have been this way two days ago. Not that he'd actually been that stubborn about the first potion in town here, now that she thought about it. And maybe he _should_ have been stubborn about that one.

Caleb closed his eyes as soon as he'd swallowed, and after a moment, he opened them again and there was a faint, exhausted smile on his face, "I think that's helping."

"Of course it is," Jester said, "This one is for sure the right one. I asked the Traveler, you know. For help finding it. But I found it, so now you can go back to sleep."

He laid back down, and with one look at Fjord, Beau stepped forward to help turn him back onto his side, like he'd been before.

It didn't take him long to fall asleep again, and they all waited to see what would happen, if anything. There was a wrinkle between his eyebrows, but no thrashing, and no whimpering right off the bat, and that was probably good enough.

She wanted to ask what happened if this didn't work, but she didn't. It didn't bear thinking about, especially not with the block-of-ice feeling still sitting in her stomach.

 

* * *

 

Caleb woke up with a dry mouth and a desperate hunger, accompanied by a hangover-like headache that made him think wherever he was and whatever had been happening was probably going to involve considerable regret.

He opened his eyes to see a blank wall and half of the back of Nott's head. He was curled around her, but she was still asleep, and while he never expected she'd have a hangover like his, it didn't hurt to let her sleep longer while he tried to make sense out of - something. Whatever. His brain felt like it was in a fog, and he never much liked that, either.

He almost stepped on Beau because he didn't expect her to be curled up on his floor nearly underneath the bed, with a rolled-up blanket for a pillow. There were feathers everywhere, and as he moved back to sit cross-legged on the bed and rub his temple, he thought he remembered Nott playing with them. They were from the pillows, which maybe was why Beau was using the blanket instead.

He wasn't hungover. He'd been sick. It was coming back, now.

He scanned the room. He vaguely remembered a bucket, but there wasn't one, now. Maybe they had moved it because he hadn't eaten, that he could remember, and it was hard to throw up if you hadn't eaten. He felt like he could eat an entire pig, now.

His stomach growled faintly, a pleasant surprise for once. Yes. He could probably brave it. As he closed his eyes to remember, more pieces came back. It was one of the advantages of a photographic memory, though it did also mean things were more frightening when he couldn't see or understand them, and he had plenty of memories like that as he tried to think back to how he'd gotten here.

He moved carefully, scooting up the bed and putting a foot down over Beau's head, but he wasn't careful enough, because Beau's eyes snapped open, and then he was being shouted at for being upright, and the shouting woke Nott, and that meant more shouting and a sudden, hard hug, and it was loud enough that he had to put a hand to his head with the arm that wasn't hugging Nott back.

"Take it slow," Beau said, calmer now that she'd made it out of her initial surprise. She'd leapt all the way to her feet somehow, but her muscles were relaxed. "You don't have to push too hard yet. We're all cool with being here another couple days. We haven't gotten to see much yet, taking care of you."

He glared at her on principle, though his half memories suggested that probably wasn't strictly deserved at the moment. "I am fine. I just feel - a bit like a hangover really. And now I would like to eat some bacon and drink some coffee. None of that is fast."

Nott pulled out of the hug. "I brought you food yesterday and you promised to eat it, but you never did. It's good food. That kind of bread you like, the brown one that's got the weird grain in it. You should try that before you go downstairs, so you don't have to move so much. Before, when you tried to move a lot, it was bad for you."

He shrugged his shoulders. Was this going to be his day? Being fussed over?

"I'm sure it's very good, Nott, but you can of course have it for yourself. I am sure I have been enough of a pain. I can get my own breakfast."

Beau moved sideways and he almost walked straight into her. "I have pocket bacon."

That was at least normal, for Beau, instead of fussy, but there was something in the way her eyes darted to Nott, just for a second, that made Caleb absolutely certain this was about to take a turn toward the unbearable.

"That's ok," he said, trying to find a way to wiggle past her and not seeing an opening, "I don't want to deplete your stores."

Beau sighed. "Gods. You know, you try to be nice - Alright, here's the deal. You said a pretty fucked-up thing while you were out of your mind, and I don't think the others caught it, or if they did, they didn't make anything of it, but me and Nott, uhh -" She and Nott knew about his past and he tensed up in the split second it took her to continue. "Anyway, we  _noticed_ , and if you're gonna be walking around with the kind of dark thoughts that might touch on the rest of us, we kind of need to know about it."

Nott put a hand on his shoulder and as he turned to look at her, he caught the tail end of a glare at Beau before she met his eyes. "We're _worried_ about you, Caleb. We're worried  _for_ you. How much do you remember about yesterday afternoon?"

He could answer now - not much, and less that made sense - but he thought about it first, trying to remember more, trying to prove he was making a good faith effort. "It's very fragmented," he said, finally, "I know I was having nightmares, because some of the things I remember don't make any sense. I know a lot of people were in here. I think Beau hit me."

"Ok, asshole, I didn't just, like,  _hit_ you hit you, and if you _really_ remember and you're just fucking with me, I-"

He raised an eyebrow, and Beau cut herself off, clearing her throat. "Anyway," she said, "You kicked Nott in the head first, so you kind of didn't leave us a lot of choices."

His brow wrinkled. He didn't remember that at _all_ , though he knew Nott had been wound up in some of the nightmares. All of the Nein had, which was new and unpleasant.

"It's alright," Nott said, "I'm fine. And anyway, it was an accident. You were asleep."

"Yeah, no harm done," Beau said, "Jester set off a whole bunch of healing spells before she went to bed last night, after we knew your fever was finally breaking and you were gonna be ok. But the point you _should_ be taking from this is that I've gotten _really good_ at hitting you so you can't move anymore, and if I'm gonna have to talk about feelings, you're gonna have to stay up here for a little bit and eat pocket bacon and weirdass bread and maybe start accepting that the rest of us care about you a little, alright?"

Caleb thought about arguing for half a second, but he never liked getting into an argument he couldn't literally walk out of, and Beau's stance between him and the door suggested this was one of them.

"Alright," he said after a moment, sitting back down on the edge of the bed, "Schiesse. I knew I shouldn't have told you about -"

"Yeah, well, you did." Beau was on the offensive, now, which was fine, because he didn't want to _have_ this conversation, and at least it meant he wouldn't have to chase things long.

"Fine," he answered, "So what did I say yesterday?"

Nott sat down next to him and Beau sat in a nearby chair, pulling it across from him and leaning forward, toward him a little bit.

"You were having a nightmare," Nott said gently, "And then Jester woke you up and felt your fever and she told you that you were burning up, and you told her to let you."

"Yeah," Beau added, before he could even begin to process that or search for the memory, "So you can see why that might have concerned us a little, all things considered."

"Yes," he agreed, "I can see that."

He didn't remember saying it. Or he did, a little, but not with enough of the pieces around it. He didn't like the places his memory got jumbled or confused or fragmented. He tried not to think about those times. His memory was supposed to be crystal clear and permanent, and every place that wasn't, every place it was warped - he almost shuddered, but he couldn't give Beau the satisfaction. Not just now. There was a lot that was fragmented around the past few days, and a lot around his parents' deaths, and he wasn't surprised they had begun to blur together, but thinking too hard about either felt dangerous and he couldn't do it. He let his mind slip back away from those thoughts, focusing instead on reading Beau's face.

She looked worried, openly worried, and she'd been that before, but it was a bit strange for it to be about him. Nott leaned into his side and he wrapped an arm around her, letting the contact steady him as he did not force himself to think of memory fragments. 

Beau's face stayed worried, but her posture relaxed a little. "So, do we need to be worried about you, I dunno, walking into some kind of fire next time you do that thing where you go blank?" she asked.

He shook his head. "No."

"Are you sure? 'Cause you sounded pretty ok with burning to death, and that's not - I don't think Jester could handle that, and the rest of us would obviously not be thrilled about it, either."

"I'm sure," he answered, sounding as sure as he felt and hoping she would believe it. "If I wanted to burn myself alive, I could have done it a long time ago."

Nott wound her arms around him, and he tightened the arm around her and twisted a little, deeper into the hug, staring Beau down in case she thought to make anything of it. "We know you're strong enough to go," Nott said, her voice half muffled against his chest, "But we also know you're strong enough to stay. I just need you to promise me that if you ever think about that, you'll tell me."

Caleb tucked his head down into the hug. "It's not - it's not like that, really."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

He let go of the hug, and so did she.

"I'm sure I just wanted her to leave me alone," he added, trying to keep his voice light, "You know how Jester rambles, and I _still_ have one hell of a headache, so-"

"Caleb," Beau said warningly.

He sighed, glaring at her for a moment.

She glared back. "We're not kidding around here. We fucking mean it. If you're gonna try to die, if you're gonna  _let_ yourself get killed 'cause you don't want to fight back, that's - we need to  _know_ that. We need to be able to protect you, or we need to know we've gotta leave you behind when we're gonna be fighting."

"It is not like that," he said again.

"Last time you said it wasn't like that  _really_. So it's at least a little bit like that." Beau's voice was hard, always hard, and he hated it, and he loved it, and he fought back.

"Yes," he said, letting himself sound angry and reveling in the feeling a little bit. "We are talking about feelings, apparently, so _yes_. I have thought that I deserved to burn, too. I have thought it would be - better to follow them into the flames, or easier, or _something_. But I have never thought it was the time to do that. It would not be -" He cut himself off and started over. "They wanted so much for me. They wanted so much, and I have not done it, and if I go to meet them now, I never will, and I can never fix my mistakes, and that is _too much_. It is too much, and no matter how many reasons I can think of why it would be easier, or why I do not deserve to live, they are never as big as that _one reason_ why I have to stay. Even ignoring all my other reasons to stay, there will never be enough to outweigh _that one._ "

He looked Beau in the eye, daring her to say something, but she didn't, not right away. "I love my parents, Beauregard. I always have, even when I thought -" Thought  _what?_ Thought something that didn't even  _matter_ now, but he breathed through the moment of pain that always came with that thought and kept going. "Even when I was lighting our house on fire, I still loved them, or I would not have broken and I would not be here now and I _cannot waste that._ I did not love them enough while they were still alive, and I cannot ever make up for that if I do not love them enough while _I_ am alive to make something out of this life I have now. I _must love them_ enough to stay here. And I do. And I always will."

Nott climbed into his lap for another hug, and it was a relief to sink into it, to bury his face into her hair and pretend Beau wasn't there, pushing him. It was good for him, probably, being pushed. But he was tired, and he didn't know if it was from the illness or everything else, and this was a lot to take. It was _too_ much to take.

Beau didn't hug him. She cleared her throat, leaning back in her chair, and at least it was enough to tell him the interrogation was over, even before she found the words.

"Ok, then," her voice was barely, barely gentler than usual, and the absence of open pity made it easier to breathe. "That's all I needed to know." She sounded decisive. Final.

The silence between them was awkward for a moment, but not as bad as it could have been.

He broke it, quietly. "I would like my pocket bacon now, thank you. I have had quite enough of talking about feelings."

She laughed, digging the bacon out of her pocket and slicing up Nott's loaves of bread, which, now that he saw them out of their paper wrappers, were shockingly, achingly familiar looking. They wouldn't be right, _couldn't_ be, but they were as close to a taste of home as he was likely to get here, and when Nott finally let go of the hug, he pulled her in again, ducking his head to whisper in her ear while Beau was occupied with the food.

"Thank you," he whispered, "I should not have been - I can see why you were worried. But I am very excited about this bread, and I would never leave you like that, either. Not on purpose. Not even if I had thought about it more than I have. I think I could decide and then still not do it, if you were there with me. But I will not do it either way, so we do not have to tell Beauregard that part."

Nott pulled back, kissing him on the forehead. "I would stop you if you did." Her face split into a devilish grin, and something in his chest eased. "I've been watching Beau do the stunny punch on you," she said, waving her fists in the air like a boxer, and he laughed in spite of himself, but she didn't seem to mind, so it must have been alright.

Beau handed him a haphazard stack of unevenly sliced brown bread and fragmented chunks of pocket bacon, much of which was fairly dry at this point.

"I would have pulled you out of the fire, you know," she said, stiffly, "I just wouldn't have liked it. Figured it was better to know my odds going in."

Caleb nodded. She seemed to mean it, and he knew her well enough to take that like she meant it. He took a bite out of his sandwich. "Someone should have pulled this bacon out of the fire a little earlier, I think. I am surprised it did not turn to dust in your pocket."

Beau laughed, again, a short sharp bark. "You're such an asshole."

"So are you."

"Yeah, well this asshole kept you alive, so-"

He looked at her and Nott, and down at his absurd sandwich, and for a moment, it was good that they knew instead of bad. He bumped the side of his sandwich against Beau's. "Here's to a bunch of assholes keeping each other alive."

She smirked. "Cheers."

After they'd eaten, Beau volunteered to go downstairs and tell everyone the news so he didn't just get mobbed first thing down the stairs. In her absence, he took a moment to lie back down, looking at the ceiling.

 _"Is this what you wanted for me, Mom and Dad?"_  he thought, _"Sandwiches out of some weird girl's pocket in a strange inn? It probably isn't. But I will get there. And they will help me. And maybe that, at least, you would have wanted for me."_

Jester came into the room without knocking, unless you counted almost knocking the door off its hinges, but he'd said what needed saying, even though he hadn't known it at the time, and he submitted more gracefully than usual to her examinations until she decided he was perfectly well and dragged him out the door to meet the others in the tavern.


End file.
